"GRADUATIONS"

 “GRADUATIONS”

Caroline and I were up in Michigan this past weekend for our granddaughter Zoe’s graduation from high school at Interlochen Academy for the Arts.  Zoe has spent two years there and has turned into a fine singer/songwriter.  She will be attending University of Colorado-Denver this fall, which has a great music program.  In the meantime, she and another friend are lining up gigs for Salt Lake City, Denver, and other places – the life of the artist! 

We’ve had a mini-family reunion up here with Emma returning from Paris after a semester abroad, Susan joining us from Baltimore, Erin’s mom and stepdad from Washington State, Erin’s younger siblings from Texas – so a lot of folk from around the country!  

This graduation weekend reminded me that this is the 60th anniversary of my graduation from high school on the Friday before Memorial Day in 1964 at segregated Central High School in Helena, Arkansas.  Most of it is a blur, but I do remember it being an exciting time.  I also remember giving the valedictory address from memory – I had no notes at all.  I quoted from JFK (who had been assassinated the previous fall), from Thoreau, and from Emerson.  My mother’s aunt Bernice (whom I called “BB”) came and was nervous all the way through my speech because she said that she was so afraid that I would forget some of my speech.  I had it down, however, and I nailed it.

This is a bittersweet time for Zoe, as she says good-bye to most of her friends and goes to live in her new home in Salt Lake, where David and Erin have now moved.  My graduation was a bittersweet time for me also, as I got ready to go to the National Youth Science Camp in West Virginia before enrolling in Davidson College (where I stayed for a year before transferring to Southwestern at Memphis – now Rhodes College).  Big events were also waiting to unfold in that summer of 1964.  Mississippi Freedom Summer was coming, which included the killing of young people who came to help register Black people to vote in the middle of neo-slavery.  In just a few weeks, the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.  Later that summer, three civil rights workers in Mississippi went missing near Philadelphia – James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman.  Their bodies were later found near Philadelphia, and during the FBI search for them, other bodies were also discovered.

In early August of 1964, Congress also passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, giving President Johnson almost unlimited power to increase the number of US troops who would go to fight in Vietnam.  This resolution would lead to the deployment of over 550,000 American troops to Vietnam, with over 58,000 of them being killed.  I would later serve as a conscientious objector to that war in 1970-72.  It was a war that would ultimately end in 1975, when all American troops were finally withdrawn.  But, in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson was riding a strong wave of popularity and was easily re-elected as President over Barry Goldwater.

Zoe’s future bends out before her in similar ways.  We face an uncertain future, based in the conflict over the decade of the 1960’s, where we fought a cultural war over what it means to be an American. In many ways, it seems like we are still fighting over the 1960’s, with both Presidential candidates having been children of the 60’s.  Trump’s fascist campaign centers on white grievance, especially white male grievance, with the longing to return to the 1950’s, when white men were clearly in control.  President Biden’s decision to run again in his 80’s makes this presidential election an unnecessarily close one, and we have the terrible prospect of electing a would-be dictator.  The issues of the 1960’s stand at the center of this struggle.  

Zoe’s high school years began in the middle of Covid, and now she is graduating when the future of the USA seems so uncertain.  We will be counting on her and her generation to help us find a way out of the wilderness.  By the way, Zoe’s first song “Colorado Bruise” was released last Friday on all streaming platforms – for look for it!  The link https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/zoestroupe/colorado-bruise?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2vfeLUKMylbH4lMys1m81Wi6aVaBdG49zOpF51cxVTL0oHAir0Um3eBBI_aem_AQk4gtur86PlAEE03wXUnaJnyP6ZSaWNbwwdcHbiH1jzlHlh_UjktnI4nWCWYrLZ3pNtakdNSycM2LGrH-D76Lp7